Maymont Park

Some gals from our church here invited the kids and I to meet them at Maymont Park yesterday, which I learned is quite a Richmond "thing to do" if you live here. It was amazing. I loved it and can't wait to go back. It's absolutely huge and we got to pet some goats, see some animals, see some amazing trees and pick up some nature treasures to bring home and study. There's also a mansion to tour, gardens to walk through, a nature center (we will be going there soon, for Layla, my little science lover). I would love to schedule some family photo shoots there--would it be weird if I just started offering photo shoots to families I barely know?

Anyway, I took a lot of pics. It was fun :)

 Layla took this one:

 Then Kelby wanted to take some:

He keeps taking them as I'm coming to get the camera from him...

 He thinks this is just hilarious...

 He's belly laughing by now...

 You might notice, I got my hair cut! My friend Becky did it and it's awesome, I love it :) I hadn't had my hair cut by a pro since she moved to VA from CO three years ago. It was time!

 I think the goats were my favorite part. They are just so funny! And photogenic, obviously ;)

 Hahaha!

 Our treasures--things we've never seen in Colorado! We got all excited when we found our first acorn outside the library last week. I don't know that I've ever seen one in person before! The green thing is a walnut! And the spiky thing feel from a Magnolia tree! Cool.

It was great to get outside and be with other women and kiddos. We can't wait to go back there and maybe even branch out to Richmond more often. (I guess it's really not that far ;) And driving downtown in Richmond is way easier than getting around downtown Denver!

On a somewhat related (to these photos, not to their subject) note, I downloaded the free trial of Adobe Lightroom 5. I've been feeling limited by iPhoto for awhile and while I think PicMonkey is so fun, it's a one-at-a-time type of editing program and that's not practical for all my photos.

My thoughts on Lightroom 5 so far:

• It is definitely more user friendly than Photoshop. I got the free trial of that and it wasn't long before I said "forget it". I can see why Lightroom is what people seem to be going to. 
• The price is right. Quite a chunk less than Photoshop and doable for me. I have a birthday coming up in a couple weeks :)
• There is still some "lingo" that I find annoying. They have terms for stuff that if they would call something normal, I wouldn't have to stop and look up what that means in the help section. 
• The help section is unhelpful. Ha! I found bloggers more helpful.
• I love, love, love the editing much more than I've been loving iPhoto! Since I started shooting in RAW files, I found that iPhoto wanted to cool my photos way down, it was weird. It was increasingly difficult to get the colors how I wanted them because minor adjustments are hard--it's major adjustments or nothing. The colors and presets in Lightroom are just beautiful. 
• I can't wait to learn more! I think a book is necessary, though. 

What are your thoughts, if you use Lightroom?